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In postwar France, campaigns were waged against certain kinds of juvenile literature, specifically comics, in an effort to curtail the perceived degeneration of youth. This resulted in the 16 July 1949 law establishing the Commission for the Oversight and Control of Publications for Children and Adolescents, aimed at censoring the contents of comic books. This article shows, however, that this campaign, ostensibly about the morality of comics, was not specifically about comics at all, but about competing conceptions of how to reconstruct citizenship in the wake of Nazi occupation and in the midst of American ascendancy. Within this censorship campaign can be read broad themes of postwar cultural politics emphasizing community, social and civic responsibility, rational progress, morality, and norms of sexuality and gender. These debates, in turn, brought young people to the forefront of social and political discussions, helping to produce the contemporary social category of youth.